Aurora Borealis
by Shidoni8
Summary: Knuckles the stoic serious echidna helps a brightly colored girbil girl with a personality like a party popper. Is this the start of a beautiful friendship or are they just too different?


Hello! I am Knux girl and you should totally put me on your alert list and your favorite list so you can see all the other good crap I pump out of my brain every so often! But you can start by reading the beginning of this thingamajig that I thought up in my first attempt to write a fan-character! You should have fun with it, okay? I hope you like it and recommend it to people who like stories of friendship, hardship and wacky pink gerbils! Read on!

**I don't own anything/one/person/place associated with sonic the hedgehog… I also don't own those fun clap on clap off lights… or their song. Darnit! Begin!**

One fine summer day the sun was shining down on Station Square, puffy clouds floated lazily across the turquoise blue sky and Aurora the Gerbil waked down the street, heading towards the store. Her fur all over her legs and body,grown long andtwisted into dreads on her head, was magenta. You couldn't see most of her body under her mid-thigh length, bright yellow dress. Aurora's arms, muzzle and tail were light tan, she had a baby-blue bow on top of her head and a same colored bow tied near the end of her long thin tail. Her shoes were the same baby blue as her bows, but the rubber at the bottom was bright yellow like her dress. The only things odd about her were her mismatching shoelaces (left shoelace: silver and sparkly, right shoelace: wide and white with a pattern of cherries), and her dreamy, distracted expression only enhanced by her wide purple eyes. Suddenly a shadow passed over her where she was walking; she panicked, startled out of her dream-state,then shrieked, falling off the curb of the sidewalk and into the street.

High up above Station Square, Knuckles the Echidna glided. He was heading toward the island and Master Emerald shrine when he heard a shriek in the street below, he looked down and saw a woman pointing at a brightly colored figure that had fallen into the street. A bus was bearing down on the figure, trying to slow, but in vain, as a heavy thud was heard and all eyes were upon the crumpled figure lying in the middle of the street. He flew down to the road and alighted next to what, upon closer inspection, appeared to be a pink gerbil, but she was in bad shape, with blood leading from a cut on her head and what looked to be a broken leg and broken arm. One woman was calling 911 on her cell phone,

"They say they're swamped!" she yelled, "Someone needs to take her to the hospital!" Someone in the crowd saw Knuckles and a shout was heard,

"Hey, you can fly!" Knuckles, who had been standing dumbly, not knowing what to do, snapped out of it and scooped her up in his arms and swung the gerbil over his shoulder. Quickly scaling a building he glided off toward the Station Square Hospital, with the unconscious animal slung over his back.

Later at the hospital Knuckles was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital with a lot of other people. He hated hospitals and the reasons were right in front of him, people crying, people falling asleep in funny positions on the hard plastic chairs, people with hopeless vacant expressions, hospitals smelled funny and were full of despair. But he had stayed, all because of that strange gerbil.

(Flashback)>>>>

Knuckles glided down to the emergency entrance to the hospital and walked in, and up to the desk. When the receptionist looked questioningly at him he said accusingly,

"She was hit by a bus and there were no ambulances available, she's unconscious." Just then a doctor saw and ran up with a gurney. Knuckles set her down on it and her eyes fluttered open, then widened in shock as she saw Knuckles standing next to her.

"Can I go now?" he asked impatiently. It wasn't that he didn't care that she'd just been hit by a bus, but the hospital smell was getting to him.

"Yes, you can go, Mr. Echidna," said the doctor. But with her right arm (the one not broken) the magenta gerbil grabbed his arm and pleaded.

"No, stay!" she smiled, "Please?" Knuckles rolled his eyes.

"Okay, I'll stay." It wasn't like he had to be anywhere soon. She grinned widely.

"Yay!" she said, then her face suddenly turned serious, "By the way, my name's Aurora," and the doctor wheeled her into a different room and out of sight.

"Um, Mr. Echidna?" the receptionist asked. When he looked over she said, "The waiting room's over there, I'll let you know when you can see her," and pointed toward a different door. He had nothing to do but go wait for her to be done. "Hmmm, Aurora?" he thought, "Interesting name, and by 'interesting' I mean strange."

>>>>(End flashback)

Now he'd been sitting here for hours and that hospital smell was giving him a migraine.

"Um, Mr. Echidna?" the receptionist popped her head into the waiting room, interrupting his thoughts. God, he was getting tired of being called 'Mr. Echidna'.

"What?" he said a bit gruffly, standing up.

"Well, Aurora wants to see you now," she said, "follow me please." So Knuckles followed the receptionist down the hallway and into a small room with four beds, two against each wall perpendicular to the one he's just walked through via door. The other wall had a small, but extremely clean window. None of the beds were full except the one on the left and nearer to the window which was occupied by Aurora.

"Hi!" she called out brightly, waving him over.

"Um, how are you feeling?" Knuckles asked when he got to her bedside.

"Oh me, well, I'm fine! I got, what was the number, oh yeah, 24 stitches!" she pointed to her head, "And two casts." She seemed almost proud as she pointed to her left leg and left arm with her right hand. "How are you Knuckles?" 'Whew, no 'Mr. Echidna,' Knuckles thought, then he asked,

"Wait, how do you know me?" Aurora giggled,

"Who doesn't know Knuckles the Echidna, guardian of the Master Emerald, last of a proud race of Echidnas?" she asked, sounding sincerely surprised.

"You'd be surprised," he said bitterly, surprised at his openness, he tried to cover, "how old are you anyway?"

"Oh, I'm fourteen. People always say I look younger, though I don't know why." Knuckles didn't know if she was joking or not, she looked about eleven or twelve, anyone could see that. "And why don't people know you?" she continued innocently, "I'm almost your biggest fan! See, I did my fur like your dreads! It took me forever to grow it out long enough."

"Um, okay. Thanks, I think. Why do you say 'almost biggest fan'?"

"Well there's got to be tons of people out there claiming to be your biggest fans so I call myself your 'almost biggest fan' so I won't make anyone mad at me."

"Okay, well I guess that's smart."

"Mm hm." she agreed, "So, why don't people know you?" she pressed again.

"Why does it matter!" he asked exasperatedly.

"I wanna know," she said simply.

"Well, fine, you know I don't want to seem like I'm complaining," suddenly his voice rose in volume and his words became rushed, "it's just everyone except Sonic falls into the background when the world is saved each time, no matter what help he had. It's always 'Sonic saved the world again' in the papers." Knuckles shook his head and his voice faded. "But it doesn't matter anyway." Aurora's expression became sympathetic.

"Oh, that sucks," she said. Knuckles bit his lip, he just burst out and told her that. He felt his cheeks turning red.

"Thanks, I gotta go now," he said, turning toward the door.

"Wait!" she called, dramatically, flinging her unbroken arm and hand into the air, "Will I ever see you again?"

"I don't know," Knuckles smiled, trying not to laugh at her theatrics, "maybe someday." And he walked out of the Hospital room. Finally out of the Hospital into the fresh air and continued on his way to the Master Emerald shrine.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A few days later Knux was sitting by the side of the Master Emerald and he was dead tired. Sonic had dragged him to a party the night before and some drunk idiot started a mosh-pit in the living room of the place, Knuckles had been trapped under drunk/unconscious bodies all night and day and on top of that, the smell of alcohol had made him nauseous and given him a migraine. Basically, Knukles felt like complete and total shit that has been run over by a steamroller.

"Not much of a partier," he muttered to himself, slouching lower to stop the cramps in his stomach.

"Who is?"

"Aaahh!" Knuckles jumped a foot in the air. He turned as swiftly as he could in his exhaustion and saw a brightly colored mammal of some sort and as he jogged his memory she called out to him.

"Don't you remember? I'm Aurora! You know, from the hospital?" Knuckles flinched as pain shot through his head, a result of her loud voice and its incompatibility with his migraine.

"I remember, just please keep it quiet," he said in a strained voice, "I have a huge headache and stomach cramps."

"From the party?"

"Yes, from the… wait, how do you know about the party?"

"You said, 'Not much of a partier' a minute ago and I just put two and two together!" Aurora smiled widely and struck a victory pose, "it equals four!"

(Knuckles) o.O

(Aurora) :P

"How did you get here anyway?" Knuckles asked warily.

"Oh, I just! Um… I went to the, erm… I'm not sure." Aurora looked confused for a second then her gaze drifted into space, "I just **came**, I guess."

Knuckles looked a little concerned for a moment, and then sighed.

"Well, since you're here anyway, do you wanna come in?" Aurora snapped to reality,

"In where?" She looked around as if to make her point. Knuckles clapped twice and a hole appeared in the ground revealing a staircase spiraling down.

"_Clap on Clap off Clap on clap off, the clapper!_" Aurora sang as she followed Knuckles into the ground.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship? Or are they just too different? Find out in the next exciting installment of Aurora Borealis!

Remember to review!


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